Sunday, August 8, 2010

Saturdays Experimental Skinsuit Bike Ride

Saturday proved to be an interesting day for an experiment. What I figured I would do is first go out to my favorite isolated field and shoot some basic shots in my new metallic black Zentai suit and then head up to Assiniboine park for lunch. This time went over the park river bridge to the Portage avenue side of Assiniboine park to sit under the shade of a giant Oak tree and have lunch, relax and enjoy the nice weather.

On the way back I figured as an experiment I would take off my t-shirt which was my favorite "Contact This" T which features an Alien flipping the bird with the text "Contact This!" underneath... Love that shirt ;)
Anyways, I packed up my backpack and headed over the bridge on my bike with my Zentai suit, hood off and tucked inside the neck line, much safer to ride with the hood down because although you can see your vision is diminished a good deal. I cycled around the main park a little just to gage people reactions before making a final decision on if I should ride like that to the Forks area or not. After riding around a bit I could see that I was getting a lot of looks, nothing that I would say was negative, in fact I think most people found it quite interesting because I could see a few heads turn for a longer look. But Assiniboine Park is like that though, people seem to be very tolerant of what people choose to wear to do their physical activities... I myself have seen some pretty strange outfits from time to time out at Assiniboine Park.

So after a couple of tours around the park I headed out back down Wellington, again lots of looks from people passing in their cars or pedestrians and joggers along the trail that runs down the center of Wellington, nothing negative and no "Redneck comments." I got down to the intersection of Welington and Sherbrook street and had to wait for the light, there was another cyclist waiting in front of me who turned around and said; "Nice suit." I said "Thanks." and he asked, "Whats it for?" I replied, "Bike riding today." A very polite fellow cyclist who thought it was cool. Neat I thought. So I headed across the intersection once the light changed and headed into Munston Park. Where I was going to put my t-shirt back on but considering things were going very well I thought, "What the heck, lets go all the way to the Forks and we'll see." So I headed out of the park down Welington, up River and across Osborne all the way to Main street. Now once you get closer to downtown I notice peoples attitudes change a little, at least the attitude of the what I like to call the "Street trash" and "Redneck" variety of folk, no one said anything negative but there was one "gang puke" type that said something inaudible as I was well past. And that about figures because they rarely have the guts to say anything to your face, same thing with spineless cowards who like to shout rude remarks from the safety of a passing vehicle lol I don't REALLY consider anything anyone like that to say as being important, those people just don't count in my book and that's my nickels worth of opinion on that. Everyone else seemed to think I looked pretty cool and I could hear the occasional "Oh Cool!" comment from a few people as I passed by on my bike. I passed over the foot bridge that crosses from Main street over to the Forks Market and then down the trail over to and across the St. Boniface bridge over to Fort Gibralter park, up through that trail to the picnic grounds to stop and make a short video to log my experience. I put my t-shirt back on and then headed for home.

Over all a what I would call very positive experience with that one joker as exception. I'm not sure if I'll do it again, I guess it depends upon how brave, outgoing or inspired I feel ;)

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